French Leave
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Given her cousin’s determination and energy, it probably wouldn’t be too long before she did transform the kitchen, Livvy acknowledged, but right now…
It would probably look better in the morning when she had had a good night’s sleep, Livvy acknowledged as she surveyed the grimy, deep porcelain sink and the old-fashioned cooking range.
The fridge-freezer standing in one corner of the room, attached to a large Calor gas canister, looked oddly incongruous, as did the small stove adjacent to it. Incongruous but very welcome, Livvy acknowledged as she saw the kettle standing on it and went to pick it up.
The water which spurted from the tap was icily cold and slightly brownish in colour. The farmhouse had neither mains water nor electricity, the former being supplied via its own well and the latter from a generator installed in one of the outbuildings.
While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, she might as well bring in her things, Livvy decided.
She had brought one small case with her; the rest of the space in her car had been filled with the boxes of bedding, towels, kitchen utensils, food and other items which Gale had insisted she bring with her.
Gale and George had bought the farmhouse complete with its furniture. Rubbish in the main, Gale had snorted, but the beds, heavy, old-fashioned affairs with wooden head-and foot-boards, had been worth keeping, although she had of course had to replace the mattresses.
The sturdy, worn stairs led up from a room adjacent to the kitchen, the British equivalent of a comfortable family breakfast-room.
Wearily, Livvy climbed them.
‘You can use any bedroom you like,’ Gale had told her. ‘Although the double ones at the front have the best views.’
Livvy opened the first door she came to and switched on the light.
She would sleep well tonight, she acknowledged half an hour later when she had drunk her tea and finished making up the bed. She was almost too tired for even the briefest of sluices under the feeble trickle of the antiquated shower, only habit compelling her to go through the motions of getting ready for bed.
Ten minutes later, her body still glowing from the rough towelling she had given it, she curled up gratefully under her duvet.
Tomorrow her holiday could begin properly. Her mouth watered as she contemplated the pleasure of eating croissants fresh from the boulangerie, washed down with rich, fragrant coffee.
Mmm…it would make a delicious and welcome change from her normal rushed breakfast of a few mouthfuls of muesli eaten hurriedly between checking her diary, reading her post and generally getting ready for work.
Livvy could hear a noise. A car door slamming. She sat up groggily in bed frowning as she glanced at her watch. It was just gone nine. She had slept for longer than she had intended.
As she climbed out of bed and reach for her cotton wrap, she wondered who her unexpected visitor was.
She guessed that it would probably be the farmer from whom Gale and George had bought the house. Gale had described him to her, fifty-odd, short and gnarled, very good at playing dumb when he chose and even, ridiculously, trying to pretend at times that he could not understand Gale’s excellently fluent French, and with the financial acumen that many a finance director would envy.
Livvy smiled to herself now, remembering how she had guessed from the acid note of chagrin in Gale’s voice that for once her cousin had met her match.
It was a pity she had overslept; if the Dordogne was anything like the other parts of rural France she had previously visited its inhabitants would operate a code of behaviour almost Victorian in its formality. Appearing to greet a neighbour a nine o’clock in the morning not dressed, her hair tousled and still half asleep, would doubtless reinforce the French belief in their superiority as a race.
She was halfway across the kitchen when she heard someone turning a key in the door lock.
Frowning, she stood still. It made sense that the farmer should have a key so that he could keep a check on the property while it was empty, but Gale had told her that she was going to warn him to expect her, and, even though she had parked her car out of sight in one of the outbuildings, surely he might at least have knocked first.
The door opened and Livvy froze in shocked disbelief.
It couldn’t be, but it was: the man who had just let himself into the farmhouse was the same man she had seen at the auberge last night, the same man who had been so rude to her in the car park, the same man who had so contemptuously ignored her plight later.
As she stared into his cold, arrogantly handsome face and felt the shock of the invisible force-field which seemed to surround him, she was temporarily completely lost for words.
Distantly her mind registered the fact that, for some odd reason, her body was reacting to his presence in the most alarming and dangerous way.
Beneath her terry robe and the thin cotton T-shirt she had slept in, her nipples were peaking with unfamiliar and confusing intensity, a shock-wave of sensation exploding inside her.
Quickly, she pulled her robe protectively closer to her body. Her heart was beating fast and heavily; she felt confused and powerless, plunged into a situation which both alarmed and excited her.
What was he doing here? How had he found her? Why had he followed her?
Giddily her thoughts swirled dizzily through her brain, temporarily robbing her of her normal, calm control, and then chillingly she realised how dangerous the situation was, how vulnerable she was.
She was alone here, vulnerable and unprotected, and for all his apparent wealth and respectability he could…he might…
Firmly she swallowed back the fear and confronted him.
‘Never allow yourself to be intimidated or to show fear. Never let anyone else take control from you,’ she and her fellow students had been told before they went into teaching, and that advice applied just as much to this situation as it did to facing a class of pupils.
Forcing her tense throat muscles to relax, she demanded huskily, ‘What are you doing here…why have you followed me? If you don’t leave immediately, I shall call the police.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘FOLLOWED YOU?’
The harsh derision in his voice was as abrasive as sandpaper against vulnerable flesh, making Livvy wince and tense.
‘You’ve got some nerve. If anyone will be calling the police it will be me. People like you who break into private property and squat…You’ve no right…’
Break in! Squat! Livvy was almost too angry to speak. How dared he accuse her?
‘You’re the one who has no right to be here,’ she interrupted him furiously. ‘Not me. This house belongs to my cousin and her husband and it was Gale who invited me to spend the summer here, and…’
‘You’re Gale’s cousin?’
Against her will, Livvy found herself responding to the sharp authority of his tone, inclining her head in curt agreement as he cut across her angry speech. A persistent and unignorable warning bell was beginning to ring in her brain. ‘You know Gale and George?’ she demanded warily, trusting its authenticity.
‘Yes,’ came the terse response. ‘What do you mean, Gale invited you to spend the summer here? George told me the house would be empty.’
Livvy swallowed.
‘You will tell George that I’m going to be there, won’t you?’ she had asked her cousin.
‘Of course I will,’ Gale had reassured her. ‘Once he can bring himself to spare us some of his precious time.’
As she looked into the face of the man watching her, the stark, cold realisation of why he was here suddenly struck her.
‘George wanted to sell the farmhouse,’ Gale had told her. Then Livvy had taken Gale’s complaints about her husband with a pinch of salt, genuinely believing that George would never behave in such an underhand manner, but this man’s presence here confirmed everything Gale had told her.
He looked the type who would take advantage of someone else’s problems for his own pecuniary gain, she decided cynically.
Tilting her chin, she told him sweetly, ‘Well, now you can see that it isn’t, can’t you? If you want to look round I can’t stop you, but obviously I’d like you to leave as soon as possible…’
‘Me, leave…? My arrangement with George was that I would stay here for a while…’
‘Surely it doesn’t take long for you to decide whether or not you want to buy the place?’ she asked derisively. He certainly didn’t look the indecisive type, far from it.
‘To buy it?’ He was frowning at her now, but Livvy wasn’t deceived.
‘Yes, and no doubt you’re hoping to get it at less than the market value,’ she added scathingly, her lip curling. ‘I’ve met men like you before, men who are always looking to take advantage of other’s misfortunes, men who put money and materialism above everything else. You should get on well with George’s boss. He’s another man who thinks that money and power are everything, who doesn’t care about the effects his demands on the people who work for him could be having on their family lives.
‘Yes…You and Robert Forrest both obviously share the same lack of any real moral values.’
Livvy saw with some satisfaction that she had succeeded in silencing him. But not for long.
‘Moral values? My God, that’s rich, coming from someone like you,’ he told her bitterly.
‘What do you mean?’ The moment she made the heated demand, Livvy knew she had done the wrong thing. She watched as the hostility in his eyes was overlaid with cynical contempt.
‘Oh, come on. I saw you last night, remember? With your…friend. Tell me something, did you ever bother to wait long enough to find out his name before falling into bed with him? Good, was he? But hardly the type you’d want to take home with you? No, I expect that, like your cousin, when you find a fool besotted enough to marry you you’ll make sure he’s rich enough to support you.’
Livvy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How dared he make such allegations against her, misjudge her so unfairly, condemn her on such implausible evidence? His insults to her were too pathetic to warrant rejection, she decided shakily, but his remark about Gale…
‘Gale did not marry George for his money,’ she told him coldly.
‘No? From what I’ve seen of your cousin, she’s very good at spending her husband’s money. Nor is she above blackmailing him if necessary by using their children.’
‘Gale just wants the best for her sons. Any mother would,’ Livvy protested, defending her cousin.
‘The best for her sons and the best for herself, but where does George fit in? I doubt very much that she ever gives any thought to what he might want…to what might be best for him. It’s no wonder…’
He stopped abruptly, frowning, absorbed in his own thoughts, Livvy recognised as she wondered uneasily exactly what they were. He seemed to know an awful lot about George and Gale. He also seemed to have a definite bias against her sex, Livvy reflected, and then wondered if it was women in general he felt contempt for, or merely Gale and herself in particular.
If so…
If so, what did it matter? She didn’t know him, after all, and after the way he had just behaved and spoken she was heartily glad she wasn’t likely to get to know him either.
She ought to feel sorry for him really, not angry with him. He really was the most abysmal judge of character, his judgement so flawed that in other circumstances his condemnation of her would almost have been laughable.
‘I think you should leave,’ she told him firmly. ‘George ought to have checked with Gale before allowing you to come down here to inspect the property. Gale doesn’t…’
‘Gale doesn’t what?’ he challenged. ‘Gale doesn’t want him to sell it? Is that why she sent you here? To use your charm to persuade would-be buyers to change their minds.’
His mouth twisted in a way that made Livvy want to hit him as he said the word ‘charm’. That he should have such a low opinion of her sex was his problem and not hers, she reminded herself, and there was at least one point she could correct him on.
‘Gale did not send me here—for any purpose. I came of my own free will, because I wanted a quiet, peaceful, uninterrupted holiday on my own.’
He was not impressed. The look he gave her sent shivers icing down her back. It was so unkind, so feral almost.
He didn’t like her defiant attitude, she could see it in his eyes, and with it an awareness of his sexual power and her potential weakness. It was totally unlike her to be so keenly aware of a man’s sexuality, and totally inappropriate in these circumstances. It irked her, baffled her, angered her, and yet made her feel anxious as well that she should have this sharp, unwanted insight into the maleness he exuded.
Her heart was beating much faster than usual, and not just because she was so angry with him, she acknowledged. She had heard that anger could be a powerful aphrodisiac, but surely not when that anger was directed at a total stranger, and a man, moreover, who on the face of it had nothing about him other than the extraordinary strength of his sexuality to attract her?
And since when, anyway, had she been attracted by a man’s sexuality? All her previous relationships had been based on mutual interests, mutual liking, mutual respect.
‘A peaceful, solitary holiday…a woman like you?’ he scoffed tauntingly now. ‘Don’t forget I saw you at the auberge.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Livvy protested, and then stopped. Why should she bother to explain herself to him? If he hadn’t been able to see with his own eyes what was actually happening, what chance was there of his listening while she tried to explain, and why should she anyway?
‘No, I don’t,’ he agreed curtly and then, almost as though it was against his will, he added harshly, ‘For God’s sake, has it never occurred to you what risks you’re running? Or is that all part of the excitement…the danger of not knowing…of living dangerously, taking risks?’
Too shocked to defend herself, Livvy stared at him. His teeth were white and strong. She gave a small, uncontrollable shudder, imagining their sharp bite against her skin…imagining…
‘Gale can’t stop George from selling this place, you know,’ he warned her. ‘He’s under a great deal of stress at the moment, and—’
‘Yes, because Robert Forrest is virtually making him work twenty-four hours a day,’ Livvy interrupted him bitterly. ‘All Gale wants is a chance to talk things over with him, but she barely sees him, he’s so busy, never mind gets time to discuss anything with him.’
‘The impression I have of your cousin isn’t that of a woman who goes in much for discussion or compromise. If George is avoiding her, perhaps it’s because he feels he has a good reason to do so.’
Livvy tensed. This man, whoever he was, seemed to know a good deal about her cousin’s marriage, his words revealing vulnerabilities in it that Livvy hadn’t known existed. Her stomach tensed uneasily; George and Gale had always seemed to have such a secure, sturdy marriage. Both of them were devoted to their sons. Livvy had seen far too often in her work as a teacher the effects of a parental break-up on children to want to see the same thing happen to her nephews.
‘Gale loves George.’ She could hear the anxiety and distress in her own voice.
‘Does she? Or does she simply love the lifestyle he provides?’
‘No,’ Livvy denied vehemently. ‘Gale had a good job of her own when she met George; she was financially independent. She gave that up to marry him, to be with him and the boys.’
‘So if material things don’t matter to her, why all the fuss about his wanting to sell this place?’
‘Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s trying to sell it without consulting her,’ Livvy told him, rallying. ‘Going behind her back…deceiving her…not telling her that he had arranged for you—’
‘Just as she didn’t tell George that she had arranged for you to come here,’ he interrupted her, adding tauntingly, ‘Besides, what makes you so sure that I do want to buy the property; perhaps, like you, I’ve simply come here for a holiday…a rest and some relaxation…a couple of weeks away?’
‘No!’ Livvy couldn’t keep the appalled denial back.
He couldn’t possibly mean what he was saying; he couldn’t possibly be intending to stay here, not after all the things he had said about her. He was simply doing it to torment her…to bully her. Well, she wasn’t going to be bullied. She had learned enough as a teacher to be able to stand her ground.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she told him flatly.
‘Don’t you?’ he shrugged dismissively. ‘Well, that’s your choice. You aren’t exactly someone I’d choose to share a house with, but…’ He turned towards the door.
‘You can’t stay here,’ Livvy protested.
He turned round, looking at her speculatively before telling her softly, ‘Oh, but I think I can. After all, unlike you, I have the owner’s permission to do so. Besides, I think I owe it to George to do so. To protect his interests, so to speak. Just as you are here to protect Gale’s.’
‘That’s not true…I’m just here on holiday.’
He smiled at her, a cold, challenging, triumphant smile. ‘Of course, you could always leave. In fact…’
‘I’m not leaving.’
What on earth had she done? she wondered sickly, suddenly feeling oddly light-headed. She couldn’t back down now, even though staying here with him was the last thing she wanted to do.
‘You’re not helping your cousin’s marriage by doing this, you know. But then perhaps that isn’t why you’re here. Perhaps you’re here because Gale knows that George can’t sell the property while you’re living in it, ostensibly a sitting tenant…’
Livvy gasped in outrage. ‘That’s not true! I’m simply on holiday; and besides, Gale would never do anything like that, even if…’ She bit her lip. What was she doing, allowing herself to be drawn into this kind of argument with him?
She had guessed from what Gale had told her that she and George were at loggerheads over the farmhouse and that Gale was upset because George was spending so much time away from home, but she had not thought that their problems were serious enough to actually threaten their marriage.
‘All Gale wants is a chance to talk to George, but that seems to be impossible while Robert Forrest…What kind of man is he, anyway?’ she exploded, her emotions suddenly breaking her self-control. ‘If George and Gale are having problems, then he’s the one to blame. No wonder his own wife left him. I’m only surprised that he found anyone idiotic enough to marry him in the first place.’
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